Ever more businesses and processes are moving into a project-orientated environment. A project or event needs staff, and logistics allocated to those staff for the project to be successful. For example, for an engineering project in a remote location, a certain number of staff, each with very specific skills must be recruited for the project. The staff may be recruited from a pool of available project staff, or alternatively from the wider employment market.
Each staff member also requires certain resources or logistics to perform the task at hand more efficiently. For example, in the remote location, each staff member would require some level of accommodation. Transport between the accommodation and the project site must also be provided, whereas certain members of staff may require transport as part of their function. Other logistics also include communication, clothing, meals and so forth.
Typically, each of the groups responsible for planning the event would compile a list containing their staffing and logistics requirements. These lists would typically be held in various spreadsheets or small database systems, and such information is filtered to other groups in an adhoc manner and typically in differing formats. Such a localised staffing process causes a lack of overall co-ordination, with no direct process to ensure that all requirements were met.
Typically, each group would pass their staffing requirements to a Company or organisation's Human Resources department for recruitment of the required staff and their logistics requirements to a logistics department. In terms of recruitment, typically advertisements are placed by the Human Resources department, inviting appropriately skilled candidates to apply. The Logistics department starts independently to draw up a logistics requirement list for the project. This causes a lot of wastage as the logistics requirement list is typically drawn up for the worst case scenario.
There is therefore a requirement for more automated and coordinated resourcing of staff for performing tasks at an event, as well as an improved method of determining the logistics needs for the event.